Requiem

PART TWO

I am lost in the despondency

Of a life unravelling before my eyes,

Of a person cast adrift on a raft of uncertainty,

Changing her by the minute, hour and day,

Where I am loved one hour,

An outcast pariah

A nothing, a nobody the next.

For me a carer

Things are right, then wrong

Good then bad

Recognised and loved

Unknown and distanced

Welcomed within ‘our house’

Then cast outside ‘my’ house,

To go home to ‘your’ house.

At times lost in a labyrinth of despair,

A maze of uncertainty.

Whatever happens

I must be resolute, strong, empathetic,

Focused on supporting the love of my life

The mother of my children.

Through the uncertain patches of dark road

She is now sentenced to navigating.

And for a time in the stillness of the evening

Shared in quiet but uncertain companionship

We can reflect together

Sharing memories

By words or sometimes in non-verbal communication.

Where I write and reflect and try

To allay the mindquake,

I so often feel.

Into and out

The moon once shone brightly on our lives,

But no more, 

Alzheimer’s in its chariot of destruction,

Has swept past,

And reduced what was,

To now what is.

We are shells of our former selves,

One with a brainbox,

Of creeping, vacuous blue

The other battling with uncertainties,

Never knowing what is around,

Thed see next corner.

Switched as it were

From the straight and true,

Eyre Highway traversing the Nullarbor,

To the uncertainties,

Of the twisted, winding,

Raindrenched slipperiness,

Of the Karunda Road.

I am the uncertain driver,

An oft distrusted navigator,

Enveloped in penumbric gloom

Driving it seems blindly,

Into the darkness of uncertainty

Feeling the confidence 

Of someone entrapped,

In a boghole of shit.